Valin Corporation Customers See Success with Pneumatic Manifold Retrofit Kits
San Jose, Calif. (Oct. 14, 2021) — Valin Corporation, a privately held, employee-owned company providing technical solutions for the technology, energy, life sciences, natural resources, and transportation industries, has engineered drop-in pneumatic manifold replacements for its customers. The upgrade kits are an effective solution for aging semiconductor tools.
As wafer yield continues to be of the utmost importance in the semiconductor industry, these manifold upgrade kits are becoming more and more popular. Unaddressed compressed dry air leaks (CDA) can lead to wafer damage. When wafers are damaged, they must be discarded. Each wafer goes through several steps carried out by various tools over the course of several weeks, depending on the complexity of the process, to reach its final stage during manufacturing (Reference: ASML). If a wafer gets discarded after all these processes, the cost is substantial and cannot be recovered. Additionally, maintenance associated with replacing failed valves to ensure that CDA leaks don’t occur can be very tedious. Before installing Valin’s Endura Slit Valve Door (SVD) retrofit kit, operators needed to shut off the complete manifold to replace a failed valve. With this new solution, each valve station can be isolated simply and effectively to perform quick maintenance. By allowing for this flexibility, the retrofit kit prevents adjacent process chamber conditions from changing, preventing wafer damage during the process. In addition to the CDA problems, various semi fabs are facing obsolescence. As these semi fab tools were deployed 20+ years ago, neither the manufacturer nor the OEMs support these old pneumatic manifolds and spares. Semi fabs are at the mercy of manufacturers and untrusted sources.
The drop-in pneumatic manifold replacements come as complete kits for ease of installation. Currently, Valin offers the upgrade kits in three different models. The AC-150-2321 is used to replace the Endura SVD Pneumatic manifolds 0010-20052 & 0010-702097. The AC-150-2444 kit model replaces Centura pneumatic manifold part 0190-09487 & 0190-02046 for both the lower gas box and upper gas box. The AC-150-2463 Centura Chamber and the AC-150-2459 Centura Ultima pneumatic manifolds replace the 0190-20124 & 0190-20148 models. The Endura and Centura manifolds are a complete drop-in solution and are pneumatically and electrically exactly compatible to the existing legacy manifolds. In addition, Valin had the manifolds fab tested and approved. Installation instructions are written by Equipment Engineers for ease of installation.
“We’ve had customers raving over our pneumatic manifold replacement kits from the time we introduced them,” said Sri Gavini, Business Development Manager at Valin Corporation. “The upgrades not only gave peace of mind to our customers in terms obsolescence and defective wafer risk, but also cut down valve maintenance time. Each kit comes complete with plug-and-play instructions, making installation a breeze. This has been one of the elements that we’ve received the most positive feedback from. Even though we have engineers on call to help guide customers through the process, the instructions are so clear, we haven’t had that many customers call for assistance.”
Click here to learn more about Valin’s Pnuematic Manifold Retrofit Kits.
Release posted on Semi.org website.
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